Go Out And Get What You Are Worth

Posted on October 31, 2015 by maxedoutmuscles

Yesterday, we talked about how discipline is so much more important than motivation. While motivation is great to get you started on something, discipline is what carries you through the good times and the bad times.

Discipline is getting things done even when you don’t want to, because you know you need to. So I suppose a rational thought is to say if you’re passionate about something, choose to discipline yourself in your pursuit of that passion.

Honestly, sometimes I don’t even want to work out and sometimes I don’t want to write posts. However, day after day I still work out and write my posts. This is because I’m disciplining myself. Above is a picture of me in a shirt I bought from brosciencelife and I honestly love the way my physique is shaping out.

..and I love the way this website is turning out.

..and in the end, I have a lot of reasons to thank for all this success but the most important is discipline. If I quit, I wouldn’t have received any results. I probably would have fallen into a vicious pattern of complacency.

Which leads me to believe something,

Life runs off momentum.

So don’t be complacent. Don’t slow down! Have a fire in you that won’t die and keep pushing forward.

You know that you’re worth something and that you can do great things. Go out and get what you’re worth.

Forget Motivation And Develop Discipline

Posted on October 31, 2015 by maxedoutmuscles

Motivation – (noun) the general desire or willingness of someone to do something.

While motivation is great, it can often be fleeting. You may be willing to do something one day, and not want to on another day. Motivation is simply wanting to do it! For a little while you’re driven, and if you have no discipline you crash and burn.

Discipline – (noun) the practice of training people to obey rules or a code of behavior, using punishment to correct disobedience.

Discipline is doing something whether you want to or not. It’s sticking to a set plan, or something you said you’d do, whether you’re still motivated or not. This is self-discipline. You don’t have to punish yourself if you don’t finish things, but you know that self-discipline is important if you want to have the habit of getting things done.

In the video above, Elliott Hulse talks about his timeline for success. He explains how he worked fruitlessly for five years on creating his youtube channel before he ever got the viewership he has now. It goes to show how you have to stay dedicated, even when things don’t seem like they’re paying off. Even when you have doubts. Even when you don’t know if you really feel like it.

Often times, I think to myself

“What would I gain if I quit working out right now?”

“What would I gain if I quit working on Maxed Out Muscles?”

The answer is nothing. There is nothing to gain from quitting. If I continue working hard I can assume that maybe someday I’ll be successful. I can also assume that I’ll become a different person as I’m working hard to become the person I need to be in order to succeed.

My questions today are

Have you personally felt like giving up?

Whether it be on your fitness regime or something you’re passionate about?

Have you ever been highly motivated to do something and then wavered?

What do you think of today’s post? Do you agree that discipline is extremely important?

Please let me know in the comments down below. I want read your opinions.

Climb To The Top And Do NOT Look Back Down

Posted on October 24, 2015 by maxedoutmuscles

For a while I have talked about being successful. To clarify, I don’t find myself as successful yet!

..and most people don’t! But what is “success”? According to Google, it’s the accomplishment of an aim or purpose. That means that success is extremely subjective and only you can determine whether you are successful.

Keep in mind that to achieve your goals you will have to work very hard. And, recently, I’ve come to the conclusion that hard work is important regardless of what you choose to do. To be the best you have to work hard.

Here’s a quote by Kevin Hart:

“Everybody wants to be famous, but nobody wants to do the work. I live by that. You grind hard so you can play hard. At the end of the day, you put all the work in, and eventually it’ll pay off. It could be in a year, it could be in 30 years. Eventually, your hard work will pay off.”

Read more quotes at Brainyquote.

So have the mentality that you will be the hardest worker to be the best at accomplishing your goals! If the journey to success is like climbing a mountain,

then don’t let the people and things at the bottom keep you from reaching the top.

You can do this.

Leave Gotham For Gains

Posted on October 14, 2015 by maxedoutmuscles

Just as Christian Bale left Gotham to undergo serious soul searching and to receive training from Liam Nielson, I have to ditch the hit TV show Gotham to work out more effectively and commit to my own journey.

I think that sometimes we become so wrapped up in fantasy that we don’t live out our lives. It can be fantasy, or some idealistic picture you have in your mind. But the way to make things happen is to ditch the fantasy and make reality happen.

Make reality happen!

I’m not saying you should fight crackheads with your underwear over your pants, but I do think you could ditch the remote and pick up a dumbbell!

Image courtesy of joyreactor.cc

Or don’t pick up a dumbbell, but do something. Do something that will ultimately strengthen you and prove resourceful to your own Hero’s Journey.

To those of you who don’t know, The Hero’s Journey is your own call to adventure. It is an outline made of all heroic narratives, like BATMAN!, by Joseph Cambbell. If you’d like to read up on the Hero’s Journey, I found a great webpage on it here.

Helpful Daily Reminders

Posted on September 17, 2015 by maxedoutmuscles

As a guy in his early 20s, it’s important that I consistently ‘check myself before I wreck myself.’ By that I, more or less, mean that I’m young and I don’t have everything figured out or the wisdom associated with getting older. I can still live a good life though, and seem very mature for my age. To do that, I try and remind myself three things daily.

I Don’t Know Everything. It’s Best To Not Be Very Presumptuous. I’ve made the error, several times, of being a ‘know-it-all.’ The funny thing is that everything is 20/20 in hindsight and when I look back at my life a year ago or two weeks ago, I notice that I could have done things a lot better. I always look back at conversations I had with people I knew and it seems like l completely didn’t listen to them or show them the respect that they deserve.
The World Really Is Kind Of Like A Mirror. Again, I notice that things are 20/20 in hindsight and it always seems like when I look back, that a lot of the problems I have with other people are at least 50% my own fault. There were times where I thought people didn’t like me or I had a weak conversation with someone, and at the time I thought that their side wasn’t justified. However, every time I look back I often think I could have handled my situations more maturely or been more confident in myself.
Fake It Until You Make It. I know I was just talking about being presumptuous but I feel that this has got to be true. I learned this from a mentor of mine, and he told me that for whatever I want in life I will have to ‘fake it till I make it.’ According to him, if you want to actually be happy then you need to strive to always have a smile on your face. If you want to be successful then dress the part. If you want to be confident in yourself then start faking it until it becomes natural.

Those three points seem to be the best strategies for getting through life at the moment, and they seem to be a kind of “life-hack” for me as I know I’m young and I haven’t gotten everything figured out yet.

Thanks for reading and please subscribe!

Motivation. Results Take Time

Posted on September 15, 2015 by maxedoutmuscles

I found this image on Google. It was from a user on Pinterest and the message is so true. It’s my third post of the “Three Day Motivational Quote” challenge and here is the last quote, and it really hits home for me:

“Commitment means staying loyal to what you said you were going to do long after the mood you said it in has left you,”

This is so true and if you’ve been weightlifting or running, then you know that commitment is the most important aspect in regards to getting lasting results.

Too often I am lifting weights and I get a lot of blood pumping to the body part I am working on, and it begins to look bigger. During that time my confidence is great, but sadly that comes to an end a few hours later. The pump shows me how big I could get, but then later reveals I’m far from being there yet.

The fact of the matter is this: Even if I get discouraged by the fact that I am not where I am going to be yet, I must keep working hard at my goals. Things won’t happen over night and there will be a lot of struggle, but it’s how I react to the struggle and decide to continue working at it that defines my results.

The same applies to you in your fitness endeavors. Thanks for reading and have a terrific day. Please subscribe.

Three Day Quote Challenge

Posted on September 12, 2015 by maxedoutmuscles

I was nominated by “The Nerdy Author” user, The Other Girl, to do a three day quote challenge. Basically, how this works is, I need to post a quote every day for three days and challenge three users to do the same each time.

That being said, here is today’s quote:

“If your dreams don’t scare you, they aren’t big enough,” -unknown. I believe this is true almost 100% of the time. Make sure there is some doubt and that you are really passionate about your dreams, and then have persistence and dedication to prove your own doubts wrong.

No matter what your circumstances or who you are, at the end of the day, if you try doing something you love and you fail then at least you tried. At the same time, nothing is stopping you from trying again with newly found wisdom and ideas.

Thanks for reading.

Here are three people I am tagging today:

Spartan Daddy

Finn West

Endless Possibilities

Again, thanks for reading, and to those of you who I tagged…..I sincerely hope you’re up for the challenge! 😉

Life Is Hard. Stay Soft.

Posted on September 12, 2015 by maxedoutmuscles

Life is hard sometimes. If you’ve been living it for more than a few years you already know that. You also know the old saying, “When life throws you lemons, make lemonade.”

As that old saying is saying, don’t allow the hardships and struggles in your life cause you to become negative. That negative energy is just something that you would wind up carrying around with you everywhere and it would be practically contagious to other people.

So far, I may have stated the obvious but what most of us don’t think about is the fact that we’re probably going to know this and still slip up and allow some of our personal struggles to mold us into something we don’t want to be in life. That something is “negative,” “whiny,” a “Debby Downer,” and sometimes even terms that are more derogatory.

So how do we make lemonade when life throws us these lemons? Simply, through practice. It takes practice. You have to keep forgiving yourself for getting upset about things and continually try to see “the glass half-full.”

I hope you are having a great day as usual and soon I will be giving updates on my Intermittent Fasting. Thanks for reading tonight’s post and I hope you start making this metaphorical lemonade throughout all your struggles, or if you like lemonade go home and make a glass.

Small Steps EQUAL Giant Leaps

Posted on September 8, 2015 by maxedoutmuscles

“Thats one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” is what astronaut Neil Armstrong was quoted saying after landing on the moon. It may have been a small step he had taken as a person, but he was taking into account all the steps, processes and calculations NASA had taken to get him there.

Metaphorically, what he said can be equated to your fitness endeavor, trials and successes in your everyday life. Let’s think about this in two parts.

One small step – that’s all you need to take. To achieve your goals, simply change one thing every week or every two weeks. If you’re trying to lose weight, just drop soda one week and once you get that down you can choose to drop cake and ice cream. Then you can choose to drop fast food, and then you can work on lowering your saturated fats and carbohydrates.
One giant leap – who knew that all them little steps were necessary for eventually making that giant leap? For my metaphor’s sake, I’ll stick to weight loss in this example: You were trying to lose weight and you eventually succeeded. You lost 60 lbs, most of which was fat, and you are now really lean. A transformation photo would show the giant leap in body composition. The photo wouldn’t show, however, the collective small steps and commitment necessary to achieve that leap.

I realize Neil Armstrong’s journey to the moon has nothing to do with fitness or our personal journeys unless we want to really go to the moon, but metaphorically I am assured that this was pretty sound.

If you wish to achieve many small battles and succeed in a giant leap at some point in your life, keep in mind the end goal and the giant leap you will be taking. Also, keep in mind that there will be many small steps to take along the way. That seems to be the way to do things right, by making small steps and eventually getting big results.

Thanks for reading and if you liked my post please submit your email and/or follow via WordPress and you can receive free updates when I post new content.

Never Give Up! Be Strong.

Posted on September 7, 2015 by maxedoutmuscles

Never give up at things you are passionate about. If you want something badly, don’t ever count yourself out and always be pushing yourself further into the direction of success.

For more posts on motivation where I go more in depth, take a look at these: What I learned from seniors at the gym, How successful people think, Appreciate Your Low Points, and To be the best you have to sacrifice.

There are probably more posts I have made on maxedoutmuscles that would be equally helpful to you as the ones linked above. It is my main goal to give you motivation, advice, help, and comeradery(we can accomplish a lot more if we work together). Happy Motivational Monday everyone!